Muda69

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/destroying-history-confederate-statues-christopher-columbus/ Agreed.

Universities Play the Victim in Admissions Scandal, but They’re Far From Blameless: http://reason.com/archives/2019/03/14/universities-play-the-victim-in-admissio

I doubt if the rich and famous indicted/arrested in this case will actually serve real jail time, but I found this amusing:

Time to Put the College Admissions System on a Rocket and Shoot It Into the Sun: http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/13/college-bribery-scandal-defund-loughlin

Providing opportunities, yes. Children who actually chose to take advantage of those opportunities, sounds like mostly no. Better to party and become some sort of internet "influencer/tastemaker" and let your parents cheat you into a prestigious institution.

Here Are All The Incredible Details From The College Admissions Bribery Scandal: https://deadspin.com/here-are-all-the-incredible-details-from-the-college-ad-1833236579#_ga=2.79272796.913238935.1552318544-2565330411.1523556988 Some truly incredible stuff in this documents.

https://mises.org/wire/next-step-social-security’s-ponzi-scheme Yep, it's time for the Baby Boomers to get paid as more and more and more of them become eligible for Ponzi Security.

Elizabeth Warren Wants to Make Your Life More Annoying and More Expensive: http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/12/elizabeth-warren-tech-antitrust-amazon You bet it is closer to the truth. It also sounds that under this regulation giant retailers like Wal-Mart and Target, both who sell their "house brand" items online as well as in their brick-and-mortar stores, would have to stop selling those house brands or spin them off. Either would mean higher prices for consumers.

Ok. Thank you for that concise explanation.

A Professor Spoke the Truth, He Still Pays the Price: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/professor-samuel-abrams-spoke-the-truth-he-still-pays-the-price/ Crazed student demands are not new on American campuses. Outrageous mischaracterizations of opposing views are par for the course (really, read Abrams’s essay and see if he’s guilty of any of the charges against him). Yet matters get more alarming when professors and presidents take radicals seriously. Reportedly, the president of the college has already met twice with the protesters, and 25 professors have signed a petition declaring they “stand in solidarity with the student activism happening this week.” Years ago, when I’d speak about the larger dangers of the campus culture wars, I’d often hear adults dismiss my concerns by confidently stating that these students would “grow up” when they encountered the harsh and unforgiving “real world.” Well, campus radicals have encountered the “real world,” and they’re remaking it in their own oppressive image. The call-out culture has migrated from campus to corporations, and now everyday Americans live in fear that their words — even words uttered in good faith and with great respect — can cost them their livelihoods. And on campus, dissenters from campus orthodoxy often need not just tenure but a rare kind of personal fortitude, including the ability to withstand repeated calls for their termination, repeated disruptions of their work, and sometimes even outright slander. Publishing truthful information about ideological imbalances threatens no one’s “safety.” Questioning the priorities of progressive administrators endangers no one’s “wellbeing.” Colleges should not “protect” anyone from New York Times essays. And the fact that even a syllable of this nonsense is taken seriously by professional academics indicates that our culture of free speech is already in decline. I've read Mr. Abram's essay at the NYT, and don't see where he is guilty of any of the charges the Sarah Lawrences Snowflakes accuse him of.

I don't get it. It's a picture of Tim Cook, looks to be from some sort of app.

College RA training guide: ‘Make America Great Again’ example of white supremacy: https://www.thecollegefix.com/college-training-guide-make-america-great-again-example-of-white-supremacy/ Note that this conversation did not take place inside a classroom—it took place in a training seminar for student resident advisors and housing staff. This is concerning, as part of a course's curriculum, one might reasonably expect this information to be presented by an academic expert on white supremacy, and the subsequent discussion to contain some nuance and room for disagreement. The Office for Inclusive Community, on the other hand, is an activist bureaucracy. What free speech assurances are there for students entering an administrative training program?

Indiana driver's licenses now have a third gender option: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2019/03/12/indiana-drivers-licenses-now-have-x-gender-option/3138447002/

http://reason.com/archives/2019/03/11/does-prosperity-trigger-calls-for-social Some interesting questions. Perhaps some of our pro-socialist champions here on the GID can help answer them?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/us/college-cheating-scandal.html Shocking news. I guess money does always talk.

But it wouldn’t be fair to small businesses: http://reason.com/archives/2019/03/12/illinois-governor-proposes-a-fair-tax Good luck with that. I feel sorry for the common citizens of Illinois, and that includes several relatives of mine. But then again you would think they would be able to vote these shysters out of office, but it hasn't happened.

Ocasio-Cortez takes a swing at Reagan -- Here's what she doesn't get about our 40th president: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/ocasio-cortez-takes-a-swing-at-reagan-heres-what-she-doesnt-get-about-our-40th-president

Omar Strikes Again: Trump Is Not A Human: https://www.dailywire.com/news/44530/omar-strikes-again-trump-not-human-ryan-saavedra

https://mises.org/wire/problem-reparations But here's the rub: in order to do this with an eye toward justice, one must identify specific victims and specific perpetrators. Potentially, as Block suggests, one could envision a legal case in which the heirs of victims would be paid reparations by the heirs of perpetrators. But again, we still encounter the problem of identifying specific persons (and heirs) involved. Reparations cannot be paid in the abstract, since, as Chris Calton has noted: In light of this, we can see that many of the currently proposed methods of paying out "reparations" are imprecise, vague, and consequently unjust. A program, for example, that forces all taxpayers (whether guilty or not of any relevant crimes) to pay reparations to a specific group of people raises several key problems that must be addressed: 1. What if a taxpayer is descended from people who didn't even arrive in the country until after emancipation? That is, should a Japanese-American, whose immigrant ancestors arrived in the United States in 1910, be forced to pay reparations? How about descendants of Mexicans who arrived in the US in 1925? 2. What if the taxpayer has some ancestors who lived in the US before emancipation and some who arrived here afterward? Would that person's "reparation tax bill" be pro-rated to match the fraction of his ancestry that shared antebellum guilt? 3. What if a taxpayer's ancestors were abolitionists who opposed slavery? 4. What if a taxpayer has no ancestors who owned slaves? The (Bad) Economics of Collective Guilt In all of these cases, it's hard to see how the person paying reparations is in any way actually responsible for the kidnapping, theft, assault, and other crimes perpetrated against actual slaves. Yes, many activists may claim that "everyone" is — in the vague abstract — "guilty" of slavery because one's ancestor once bought cheap cotton dungarees in 1858, or once (even unwittingly) worked for a company that sold timbers to ship builders who built slaving ships. These arguments rely on the same twisted logic which would have us believe that people who buy gasoline are somehow morally responsible for the brutality of the Saudi Arabian dictators, or that a teenager who smokes a joint is responsible for terrorism like that perpetrated on 9-11. (Yes, the US government created an ad campaign saying exactly this.) This everyone-is-guilty claim, in fact, is one invented by the slavedrivers themselves in an attempt to claim that all white Americans — including Northerners — somehow directly benefited from slavery, and thus all abolitionists were hypocrites. It was always a desperate and unconvincing argument, but by putting these claims forward, the slavedrivers of old helped pave the way for the modern-day reparations advocates. In real life, the people responsible for slavery are only the people who directly owned, sold, or traded in slaves; and the politicians who pushed to preserve, spread, or defend slavery through legislation and the state's police powers. Slavery Suppressed Wages for Many Workers Moreover, many non-slaves can be shown to have been negatively impacted by slavery because it acted to suppress wages. As historian Kerry Leigh Merritt describes in detail in her book Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South, wage-earning, non-slaveholding whites in the South — who constituted the overwhelming majority of the population — received far lower wages than they would have had they not been forced to compete with slave labor by a legal system designed to favor the tiny minority of slaveowners. Nor were these effects limited to Southern whites only. The increased profitability of agriculture in the South — thanks to slavery — acted to divert resources from Northern agriculture and industry as well, thus lowering wages for at least some Northern workers. Moreover, capital that poured into the slave plantation could have been used to improve worker productivity through innovation in machinery and other capital. Instead, that investment was diverted away from improving free labor, and devoted to expansion and maintenance of the slave economy. Overall, the presence of slaves suppressed wages nationwide. The fact that slaveowners and plantation owners indisputably benefited from slavery hardly means that white day laborers benefited as well. Yes, chattel slaves fared far worse than any other group. But that doesn't mean those day laborers were — to use the modern parlance — "privileged" by the existence of the slave economy. In practice, it significantly lowered their income. So, once again we are left with the problem of determining who is legally and morally responsible for paying out these reparations in any way connected to identifying truly guilty parties. In practice, it's nearly impossible, although government being what it is, advocates for reparations are likely to simply demand that all the taxpayers foot the bill to pay one identifiable interest group, whether or not the taxpayers involved can be shown to have any direct involvement in the perpetuation or spread of slavery. Ultimately, the issue shouldn't even be regarded as a complicated one. If "reparations" are truly that, then they can only based on handing over stolen property from the thief to the victim (or their heirs). So long as these specific individuals are not identified, then the policy being discussed has nothing to do with reparations. It's just a wealth redistribution scheme. A logical and concise explanation regarding the problem with paying reparations by Mr. McMaken. Too bad it will mostly be ignored, overwhelmed by emotional hyperbole.

Devin Nunes, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Square Off Over Straw Bans, Socialism: http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/11/devin-nunes-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-squ Nunes' tweet references California's new straw-on-request law, passed in September 2018, and which went into effect in January 2019. The law requires servers to ask patrons at full-service restaurants if they want a straw before giving them one. Calling straw bans socialism is hyperbolic—although they might be a good example of "late socialism"—but Nunes' server wasn't wrong that eating establishments have something to fear from this latest restriction on how they can serve their customers. California's army of health inspectors are empowered to enforce this straw policy, making them Nunes' "straw police." Handing out unsolicited plastic straws will net a food service business a formal warning for the first two violations. A third violation could earn them a $25 fine. The original version of California's straw-on-request policy would have allowed jail time for violating, although that was stripped out of the final bill. Local bans like San Francisco's are far more onerous, and come with fines as high as $500. Here in Washington, D.C., which started enforcing a straw ban earlier this year, there is indeed a "straw cop" walking the pettiest beat in the country. For Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), Nunes' warnings of the perils of straw socialism weren't just over-the-top; they were fake news. It's unclear if the Ocasio-Cortez's tweet was questioning the very existence of straw ban or just Nunes' attempt to tie it to socialism. The congresswoman herself, while silent on plastic straws, saw fit in a recent interview to bash plastic bags. Regardless, her tweet suggests a rather dismissive attitude toward petty restrictions that most people rightly see as irksome government overreach, and that businesses and their employees have every right to be concerned about.

Case in point about out of control federal spending: Pentagon Spent $4.6 Million on Lobster Tail and Crab in One Month: http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/08/pentagon-spent-46-million-on-lobster-tai I have first hand experience with this use-it-or-lose-it mindset. During college I was in a co-op program at Crane Naval Weapons Center (not it's name now), doing computer programming for a large procurement and logistics system used by the Navy. Come September my manager would offer me weekend overtime hours if I wanted it, not because my project work load actually required it. His reasoning was that he had so much $ budgeted for yearly overtime and if he didn't use all of it he could lose for the next fiscal year. Wasteful, wasteful, wasteful. And all at the expense of the American taxpayer.